Morocco’s Modernity: An Exploration through Literature, Cinema and Culture

Hakim Abderrezak
University of Minnesota

Some critics have argued that Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel of 1954, Simple Past, marks the advent of modernity in Moroccan literature. Others have said the same of Mohamed Choukri’s 1952 work, For Bread Alone. Despite the disagreement, critics are united in the fact that Moroccan modernity, as portrayed in literature, emerged just before the country’s independence from France in 1956—a crucial time, indeed, in the history of the kingdom.

What is striking, however, is that Moroccan modernity did not develop as a reaction to foreign influences but as an outgrowth of its own ethos and heritage, well exemplified in these two epochal works upon which this talk is based. Instead of highlighting the country’s freedom from imperial power, the novels emphasize a liberation from paternalistic thought patterns, along with the familial and societal constructs to which they give rise. They also stress the introduction of Western subjectivity into the Moroccan worldview, the characters embracing newfound freedoms that leave tradition behind.

This idea of modernity, as we will see, has taken on both positive and negative aspects of contemporary Moroccan culture in the colloquial Arabic of the land. This linguistic aspect is crucial in understanding Moroccan media, institutions, and politics that this presentation will bring us to discuss.

We will first look at the elements of Simple Past and For Bread Alone that develop the themes of Moroccan modernity, pursuing then a comparative study of more recent works that have been shaped by these novels. In conclusion, we will extend our themes using a variety of cinematic and cultural productions to encompass the wider region of northwestern Africa, that area frequently termed the Maghreb.